I cook. I bake. I eat out. And listen to great music while doing it. Then I write about it. Enjoy!

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Welcome to the new and improved Carano's Cucina. I make a lot of kick ass food and go out to some amazing restaurants. Take a look around and make yourself at home :)

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Gremawhatta?

I'm always looking for new ways to dress up chicken breasts or pork chops. I marinate. I grill. I roast. I saute. But more, more! I want more. I want more flavor. I want more variety. I want it all. And a gremalota is a sure fire way to have an amazing amount of flavor. You can put it on steaks, on pork chops, on chicken, on lamb...whatever you want. It's all good.

So on this day I had averagely thick pork chops to slap on the grill. And thinking about what I had on hand to dress them up lead me to gremalota joy. I have tons of parsley in my garden. I still have garlic from my garden and I always have a pretty big supply of lemons on hand. And that my friends, is all you need to make a delish gremalota. It's traditionally served with veal, but why discriminate. Use it on anything.

Start with a large bunch of flat leaf parsley.

This was a big bunch and when chopped finely, which is what you want to do, it ends up being about half a cup of parsley. Everything is going to be chopped very finely. I suppose you can put it in a food processor but if you have a good knife why dirty a food processor?

You will also need the zest of two lemons.

If you don't already have a microplane, I highly suggest you get one. It's not just for zesting (although it's worth it just for that), but you can also grate cheese, garlic, fresh ginger. It's a great tool to have in the kitchen.

Then chop the garlic fine. I used three cloves. Gremalota is essentially a raw sauce so this garlic is not going to be cooked. The finer you can chop everything the better.

Mix it all together with about two Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, the juice of half a lemon and salt and pepper to taste. This is not a very drippy sauce. In fact, I kept it drier on purpose. The lemon zest already adds a lot of lemon flavor so it doesn't need much more and I don't want it too oily. Just a touch of oil. When you take your meat off the grill or out of the broiler or out of the pan, whichever method you use to cook it, spoon the gremalota over the top, and enjoy.

And enjoy you will! It is such a huge burst of flavor it will definitely wake up your taste buds! Buon Cibo mia Amici!!